So lots of tunnel time continues, with regular Friday night sessions at Basingstoke. Currently up to 11.5 hours of FS tunnel in total and plenty more planned !! We did more tunnel time with Mayhem coached by Chris and this time, we made it up to a 7-way, with Chris and the tunnel rat also in the tunnel to try and keep things under control ! Much more confident of our abilities to work together so hopefully that will carry through to training in the air. We have managed a few jumps although Paul is currently out of action due to an operation, and we had to sub in some random FS jumpers to get the numbers up. However, doing 2 floats to come up to the base is working well, especially when we put the person at the back of the door out first (much to Paul's disgust!). I still do the count but whoever is behind me leaves marginally before I do, so I jump out a bit further into clean air and 'slide down the hill' in a hard arch to try and stay fast enough for the base not to zoom past me, leaving me to dive to catch up again, lol. Am now regularly wearing 8-10lbs of lead in the tunnel and the air to keep my fall rates high enough and I'm still a bit heavier than I would normally expect to be in the summer months! I guess my rig is smaller so is also a bit lighter than I am used to.
The switch to IC worked well in our 4-way, so currently our team for Cahors is Jeff as OC, me as IC, Jonathan as Tail and Malcolm as Point. I somehow seem to manage more tunnel time than anyone else (doing 4-way Friday if no-one else can make it) and am now much more confident in my ability to fly my slot and wait for whoever is missing to come back to me. Finally got together in the air as a team on Saturday and managed 3 jumps despite a slow start and several weather holds, and the tunnel time is showing its value. There are lots of moments on the videos where Jeff and I are holding our relative positions, even in Randoms where we don't have grips on each other, waiting for Point and Tail to take their places.
Definitely need to do more work on our exits - my presentation is improving and we managed to keep a 3-way together launching a P for our last jump, though we lost Tail after a hesitation in the door. Didn't have video for that dive so not really sure what happened on that one!
I've managed 15 jumps so far this year, though it took a bit of psyching myself up to manage the first one after nearly 5 months off, coming back to it with a new rig, different downsized canopy and nil winds for the first landing! Jeff was very patient with me and restrained himself enough to only point out once that he could have done 2 hop 'n' pops in the time it took me to actually get brave enough to manifest, lol. And as with last year, as soon as I was back in the air, it was all fine. Pulled a little higher than usual and didn't bother trying to collapse the slider, just concentrated on practice flares, turns and how the rear risers react. My descent rate is significantly steeper on the Sabre 170 than on the Silhouette 190 and it caught me out a little on my pattern (right at the far end of the runway, out of everyone's way!!) so I had a crosswind landing to avoid a very low turn. I was tempted to just take the downwind landing but a few other people had had the same idea as me about being well out of the way, so consequently, there were 3 or 4 other canopies in my pattern! Getting more used to it now and also more used to judging the likely glide length though the wind directions have limited my target practice since I still want a decent amount of height on my turn into final until I am confident of the recovery time and I've been running alongside the runway on the crosswind leg both at Nethers and LPS.
Started FS coaching with Stef today - he did very well and I learned a lot about how to teach. Just because someone says they understand on the ground doesn't mean they'll actually do it in the air, ha ha. Need to get my cutaway system on my open face helmet approved and attach my camera. Will need to try a few jumps with camera on my own before I attempt to jump with anyone else. I think I can probably switch it on and forget about it since I am usually concentrating a lot on what is going on during the dive, but so many articles say it doesn't happen like that so I am a little wary. Will need to sort some video editing software too!
Sunday 3 April 2016
Thursday 17 December 2015
Lots more tunnel time :-)
Tunnel time with Mayhem lived up to the team name again - still no larger than 4-way groups though most people are looking a lot more stable now. Had great fun practising swooping on Chris, though I was a bit hesitant to really put the speed on at first. He insisted that Jeff and I wound it up so we actually got some pretty fast dives in. Despite wearing 8lbs of lead, I still found the wind speed quite floaty so a quick flare was enough to put the brakes on very rapidly for me :-)
The drills were useful in improving individual skills and I'm getting much better at flying my slot strongly. I can actually counter some of the combat docking now, though I'm hoping that won't actually be so necessary in the air next season, lol.
Next session for Mayhem will be towards the end of January - with a bit of luck, I'll have my camper by then so it won't be such a slog to get to Bedford as I can go up earlier and chill out in comfort, then stay overnight instead of fighting roadworks and road closures all the way home again!
Aeronauts coached session with Tarn was hard work and we definitely made some massive improvements as a team. We gradually built up the wind speed and I am tunnel-fit enough to have been able to keep my arch on right to the end of the hour (4 x 15 min sessions spread over a few hours). That did mean I had to keep popping back up to stay on level with the guys though, which is something I have to work on. I'm still experimenting with the amount of lead that I need to wear - since I'm pretty flexible, it looks like I can get away with less than I thought, which is great news for my back! The last session did end up with me cradling the weight belt like a pregnancy bump to ease my back when we weren't actually flying...!!
I'm currently flying Point but now that Niels has declared he definitely won't make it to the POPS meet in Cahors, I think I'd like to go back to IC for that competition and have whoever substitutes take Point. Have suggested it to Jeff as the two of us could practice IC/OC together at 4-way Friday sessions to see if it works for us.
The drills were useful in improving individual skills and I'm getting much better at flying my slot strongly. I can actually counter some of the combat docking now, though I'm hoping that won't actually be so necessary in the air next season, lol.
Next session for Mayhem will be towards the end of January - with a bit of luck, I'll have my camper by then so it won't be such a slog to get to Bedford as I can go up earlier and chill out in comfort, then stay overnight instead of fighting roadworks and road closures all the way home again!
Aeronauts coached session with Tarn was hard work and we definitely made some massive improvements as a team. We gradually built up the wind speed and I am tunnel-fit enough to have been able to keep my arch on right to the end of the hour (4 x 15 min sessions spread over a few hours). That did mean I had to keep popping back up to stay on level with the guys though, which is something I have to work on. I'm still experimenting with the amount of lead that I need to wear - since I'm pretty flexible, it looks like I can get away with less than I thought, which is great news for my back! The last session did end up with me cradling the weight belt like a pregnancy bump to ease my back when we weren't actually flying...!!
I'm currently flying Point but now that Niels has declared he definitely won't make it to the POPS meet in Cahors, I think I'd like to go back to IC for that competition and have whoever substitutes take Point. Have suggested it to Jeff as the two of us could practice IC/OC together at 4-way Friday sessions to see if it works for us.
Saturday 5 December 2015
Free-flying definitely not my strong point ;-)
So after a total of 2 hours coached tunnel time, my position in sit-fly has improved dramatically, but I'm still not stable by myself for more than a few seconds. I really need to get into the air to practice properly but the UK weather really isn't playing ball with that - currently gale force winds howling around on the first weekend I've had free in a while. And it's cold...... I have a baggy winter FS suit for fitting lots of thermals underneath but not sure how I'm going to attempt any kind of FF suit for these conditions. My super-cheap 10th anniversary tunnel time is all used up and Paul is in Dubai until 14th December for the FAI World Air Games so time to get back to FS for a bit.
Had a couple of 4-way sessions with the new line-up for Aeronauts (Niels has now replaced Rod) which proved somewhat challenging in terms of sorting wind speeds and fall rates. We had forgotten to note down our wind speed after the previous session so went with the recommendation of the tunnel rat at 68%. I was first in and despite wearing lead, instantly popped up high enough to get my feet stuck in the top of the doorway, lol. The others didn't fare much better so we had the speed dropped down a bit but it was still rather hit and miss as to who was popping up and who was sinking down to the net, partly due to differences in body positions and flying techniques. By the end of the first session, at the break we decided that I would swap weight belts with Niels so he had more lead and I would arch more. That improved things quite a bit though Jonathan still struggled to get off the net several times. On watching the videos, we decided that we could really do with some formal coaching. We had improved over the sessions but there are probably lots of things we can do to fly better together as a team. Since Tarn was coaching another team, I asked her if she had availability for our next session - luckily she does, so on Saturday we have 4 sessions with a break between each to attempt to make some decent progress. And somewhat optimistically, we have agreed to check the weather forecast to see if we can get in the air on the Sunday!!
In the meantime, having watched the aptly named Mayhem-ites creating havoc in the tunnel at Bedford last month, I am now fully healed so it's time to join in the carnage :-) They didn't actually manage to get any further than 4-way groups last time, so there will be more focus on individual skills this time, then hopefully build up to 6- and 8- way sessions. The idea is to improve everyone's flying skills so that when we build the Speed 8, each person joining is under control and is not "combat docking" and threatening to take the whole team out :-D
Had a couple of 4-way sessions with the new line-up for Aeronauts (Niels has now replaced Rod) which proved somewhat challenging in terms of sorting wind speeds and fall rates. We had forgotten to note down our wind speed after the previous session so went with the recommendation of the tunnel rat at 68%. I was first in and despite wearing lead, instantly popped up high enough to get my feet stuck in the top of the doorway, lol. The others didn't fare much better so we had the speed dropped down a bit but it was still rather hit and miss as to who was popping up and who was sinking down to the net, partly due to differences in body positions and flying techniques. By the end of the first session, at the break we decided that I would swap weight belts with Niels so he had more lead and I would arch more. That improved things quite a bit though Jonathan still struggled to get off the net several times. On watching the videos, we decided that we could really do with some formal coaching. We had improved over the sessions but there are probably lots of things we can do to fly better together as a team. Since Tarn was coaching another team, I asked her if she had availability for our next session - luckily she does, so on Saturday we have 4 sessions with a break between each to attempt to make some decent progress. And somewhat optimistically, we have agreed to check the weather forecast to see if we can get in the air on the Sunday!!
In the meantime, having watched the aptly named Mayhem-ites creating havoc in the tunnel at Bedford last month, I am now fully healed so it's time to join in the carnage :-) They didn't actually manage to get any further than 4-way groups last time, so there will be more focus on individual skills this time, then hopefully build up to 6- and 8- way sessions. The idea is to improve everyone's flying skills so that when we build the Speed 8, each person joining is under control and is not "combat docking" and threatening to take the whole team out :-D
Wednesday 4 November 2015
Attempting to Sit fly!
A car accident (ironically on the way to a skydiving training session) has kept me out of the sky for the time being and it will probably be another couple of weeks before I am fit enough to be confident that I can flare properly and can do all my EPs if needed. Nothing major, the x-rays showed I have strong bones with no hairline fractures, but the bruising means my elbow occasionally screams "Ow!" at me if I overdo it, which is not really something that I want to experience in the air or on final!!
I've also skipped FS training for the time being as I don't want anyone to be hanging off my right arm just yet. Not really an issue as Point in the randoms so I'll be back training with Aeronauts at the end of the month, but am staying out of the 8-way shenanigans this week :-)
Instead, I am focusing on the free-flying, or in my case, otherwise known as 'stranded beetle' flying :-p After a further 30 mins at Basingstoke tunnel on Monday and 20 mins today, we have got the wind speed up to around 80% and I'm learning how to self-correct my back-fly. I'm finding it more difficult to be stable in back-fly than in sit, though Paul says that is normal. I've had a few attempts at turning by myself on the net - it was fine at 75% and then suddenly got a lot more dramatic when the wind speed was turned up a few notches, ha ha. I did a bit of flying around the tunnel though I struggle with keeping my left knee out (partly due to an inherent twist in my spine) which then means I either side slide or turn, depending on what else is going on with my arms and torso. I also managed to fly backwards (legs out, arms in) but struggled with forwards (legs in, arms out) as I got stuck on the net. The video shows that I'm not actually stretching my arms back nearly as much as I think I am either, as I'm allowing the wind to push them upwards off the net.
Discovered that my default of a stable belly-to-earth position when things go wrong really really doesn't work at free-fly windspeeds, lol. Feels weird to deliberately flip onto my back but pulling my arms and legs in is very effective at dropping me back to the net if it's all going pear-shaped.
Paul hasn't yet let go of me in sit-fly but we did a lot of practice of the position and did exercises where we matched hands and brought the arms in and out, whilst maintaining a good posture (all with Paul standing on my feet on the net!). He did turn the wind speed up and steer me around the tunnel a bit during our last couple of rotations and I was mostly able to keep my balance - the corrections feel easier than in back-fly but that's probably because he has hold of my knees so I'm only really having to be concerned with my arms and torso.
I've got a lot better at walking in the tunnel - it's going to be relatively easy to walk at FS wind speeds now I can do it at free-fly speeds, lol.
Got a week's break now before my next session, so will be using a wall for support and attempting to hold the sit position to get my quads stronger in the meantime.
And I will be 'supervising' Mayhem's 8-way efforts at Bedford tunnel from the comfort of the viewing area tomorrow :-)
I've also skipped FS training for the time being as I don't want anyone to be hanging off my right arm just yet. Not really an issue as Point in the randoms so I'll be back training with Aeronauts at the end of the month, but am staying out of the 8-way shenanigans this week :-)
Instead, I am focusing on the free-flying, or in my case, otherwise known as 'stranded beetle' flying :-p After a further 30 mins at Basingstoke tunnel on Monday and 20 mins today, we have got the wind speed up to around 80% and I'm learning how to self-correct my back-fly. I'm finding it more difficult to be stable in back-fly than in sit, though Paul says that is normal. I've had a few attempts at turning by myself on the net - it was fine at 75% and then suddenly got a lot more dramatic when the wind speed was turned up a few notches, ha ha. I did a bit of flying around the tunnel though I struggle with keeping my left knee out (partly due to an inherent twist in my spine) which then means I either side slide or turn, depending on what else is going on with my arms and torso. I also managed to fly backwards (legs out, arms in) but struggled with forwards (legs in, arms out) as I got stuck on the net. The video shows that I'm not actually stretching my arms back nearly as much as I think I am either, as I'm allowing the wind to push them upwards off the net.
Discovered that my default of a stable belly-to-earth position when things go wrong really really doesn't work at free-fly windspeeds, lol. Feels weird to deliberately flip onto my back but pulling my arms and legs in is very effective at dropping me back to the net if it's all going pear-shaped.
Paul hasn't yet let go of me in sit-fly but we did a lot of practice of the position and did exercises where we matched hands and brought the arms in and out, whilst maintaining a good posture (all with Paul standing on my feet on the net!). He did turn the wind speed up and steer me around the tunnel a bit during our last couple of rotations and I was mostly able to keep my balance - the corrections feel easier than in back-fly but that's probably because he has hold of my knees so I'm only really having to be concerned with my arms and torso.
I've got a lot better at walking in the tunnel - it's going to be relatively easy to walk at FS wind speeds now I can do it at free-fly speeds, lol.
Got a week's break now before my next session, so will be using a wall for support and attempting to hold the sit position to get my quads stronger in the meantime.
And I will be 'supervising' Mayhem's 8-way efforts at Bedford tunnel from the comfort of the viewing area tomorrow :-)
Monday 26 October 2015
Aeronauts
So the new Aeronauts team of Jeff Chandler, Rod Stone, Jonathan Smith and me finally got together for the first time and had a tunnel session.
We had half agreed on who would fly which slot beforehand but that got changed around on the day, and it may change again, lol. But for now, I am flying Point which means I have to try and remember to stay out of the middle of the tunnel !! (too used to being IC or OC, lol).
We were pretty rubbish to start with, but improved a little over the first session and were starting to get it sorted in the second round, then it all went a bit pear-shaped again by the end. I may end up nabbing some of those solo flights back from free-flying and use them on some one-to-one FS coaching instead! I am not bad at flying my slot, but I am not slick either and I do have a tendency to move about rather than staying in one place. Will see how the next session in November goes. The current plan is to buy an hour of tunnel time each at the AGM in January so we will have 4 hours of tunnel for training, then probably around 100 jumps together, plus competitions every month from May to August, including the French POPS meet in Cahors, a couple of the UKSLs, the World POPS meet in Germany and the UK Nationals.
Along with the training for Speed 8 and the Dynamic 6 sessions, and being an FS coach for LPS, it's going to be a busy year!!
We had half agreed on who would fly which slot beforehand but that got changed around on the day, and it may change again, lol. But for now, I am flying Point which means I have to try and remember to stay out of the middle of the tunnel !! (too used to being IC or OC, lol).
We were pretty rubbish to start with, but improved a little over the first session and were starting to get it sorted in the second round, then it all went a bit pear-shaped again by the end. I may end up nabbing some of those solo flights back from free-flying and use them on some one-to-one FS coaching instead! I am not bad at flying my slot, but I am not slick either and I do have a tendency to move about rather than staying in one place. Will see how the next session in November goes. The current plan is to buy an hour of tunnel time each at the AGM in January so we will have 4 hours of tunnel for training, then probably around 100 jumps together, plus competitions every month from May to August, including the French POPS meet in Cahors, a couple of the UKSLs, the World POPS meet in Germany and the UK Nationals.
Along with the training for Speed 8 and the Dynamic 6 sessions, and being an FS coach for LPS, it's going to be a busy year!!
Over to the dark side....
So Airkix had a birthday sale of tunnel time - about 1/3 of the usual cost - so I bought 2 hours of solo time for just under £400. And have decided to use it to try free-flying so I can get my FF1 !
Had my first session with Paul Capsey, just 10 minutes to start with, and to my surprise and delight, actually managed to fly around the tunnel a bit on my back before the end of the session! It's quite tricky keeping my legs positioned correctly, I found it easier to get my arms in position and then just forget about them, with my focus purely on keeping my legs strong. That made it easier to correct turns and to stay more stable. We had a little play at the end with walking backwards and forwards in the tunnel at high wind speed - harder than it sounds but great fun :-)
So I have the rest of my intervals booked throughout November and I'm hoping that I should easily be able to progress through to sit-fly and moving myself around the tunnel well enough to have some practice in the air on my own and then aim to have my FF1 signed off. Which will resolve a lot of niggles at various dropzones and will mean more fun when I end up on solo jumps :-)
Had my first session with Paul Capsey, just 10 minutes to start with, and to my surprise and delight, actually managed to fly around the tunnel a bit on my back before the end of the session! It's quite tricky keeping my legs positioned correctly, I found it easier to get my arms in position and then just forget about them, with my focus purely on keeping my legs strong. That made it easier to correct turns and to stay more stable. We had a little play at the end with walking backwards and forwards in the tunnel at high wind speed - harder than it sounds but great fun :-)
So I have the rest of my intervals booked throughout November and I'm hoping that I should easily be able to progress through to sit-fly and moving myself around the tunnel well enough to have some practice in the air on my own and then aim to have my FF1 signed off. Which will resolve a lot of niggles at various dropzones and will mean more fun when I end up on solo jumps :-)
Sunday 11 October 2015
Next steps
Another weekend at a dropzone, this time at LPS. Only managed 2 jumps in the end, partly due to weather, partly due to ATC holds and partly due to not being very bothered, lol.
Gary has made me a very pretty new purple weight belt for the tunnel - it holds about 12.5lbs of lead so should be enough for the training I'll be doing with Jeff and the others. It's very comfortable as he has put skinny pockets with little pouches (1.25lbs of lead each) rather than the big 2lb bags in my other belt which tend to be a bit lumpy. I actually ended up wearing it today as I lent my other belt to an AFF student who is very light and doesn't arch well (nightmare for Marie-Anne, lol) - it will be fine for the tunnel but it's a bit big for my waist with some of the lead taken out and tends to slip around a bit. Gary will make me some extension clips for the other one so I can fit it on when I'm wearing lots of layers over the winter (and to take account of the fact I'm already at winter weight at the end of the summer - oops!)
And I'm starting my FS Coach rating training with Marie-Anne. I've re-read the manual and I'll be briefing her on a dive next week and hopefully taking her as my 'student' on a jump. Gary will give me my "Methods of Instruction" brief and we should be good to go :-)
My next downsize is imminent as Gary has my rig and will be putting a Pilot 168 into it for me next week. Finally a 1:1 wingloading (well, when I'm wearing a weightbelt anyway, ha ha). I absolutely love the Silhouette so it's going to be a bit strange to jump something else. Funny how I got used to grabbing any old student rig, from a Manta 288 down to a Nav 240 and everything in between, but now that I've put over 100 jumps on the Silhouette, I'm a bit nervous of jumping anything else :-p
Gary has made me a very pretty new purple weight belt for the tunnel - it holds about 12.5lbs of lead so should be enough for the training I'll be doing with Jeff and the others. It's very comfortable as he has put skinny pockets with little pouches (1.25lbs of lead each) rather than the big 2lb bags in my other belt which tend to be a bit lumpy. I actually ended up wearing it today as I lent my other belt to an AFF student who is very light and doesn't arch well (nightmare for Marie-Anne, lol) - it will be fine for the tunnel but it's a bit big for my waist with some of the lead taken out and tends to slip around a bit. Gary will make me some extension clips for the other one so I can fit it on when I'm wearing lots of layers over the winter (and to take account of the fact I'm already at winter weight at the end of the summer - oops!)
And I'm starting my FS Coach rating training with Marie-Anne. I've re-read the manual and I'll be briefing her on a dive next week and hopefully taking her as my 'student' on a jump. Gary will give me my "Methods of Instruction" brief and we should be good to go :-)
My next downsize is imminent as Gary has my rig and will be putting a Pilot 168 into it for me next week. Finally a 1:1 wingloading (well, when I'm wearing a weightbelt anyway, ha ha). I absolutely love the Silhouette so it's going to be a bit strange to jump something else. Funny how I got used to grabbing any old student rig, from a Manta 288 down to a Nav 240 and everything in between, but now that I've put over 100 jumps on the Silhouette, I'm a bit nervous of jumping anything else :-p
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